I have reached a stage where I have started accepting the hierarchy in student-teacher relationships. I sometimes fancy myself believing that it is necessary.
I went for school observations today. The basis of this entire exercise is rooted in hierarchy. I sit at the back of the class while my students teach. With the current workloads, I rarely ever get to observe a whole class. I watch bits and pieces, with a full stretch, maybe fifteen to twenty minutes of teaching. Use these observations to provide feedback and form opinions about students. Analyse their teaching and at the end of the year, mark an assessment.
Each of the teacher educators use our own yardsticks of what constitutes good teaching. The idea that I am supposed to know and inform student-teachers about what teaching should be like is an indication that I am in a hierarchically superior position.
I am supposed to be equipped with the knowledge of good teaching and be able to somehow transfer that knowledge to my students. I can come and go in the school as I please. Students, who in school are teachers, treat me with reverence which I am sure I do not deserve. Standing up when I enter the room, crowding towards me as I reach school, ensuring that I am comfortable, keeping me informed of every development, relying on me to negotiate the tough spots in school. In earlier years I have noticed students keep the best chair, out of all that are available, for me. The attitudes of students change when I am in school.
And despite the awareness of these hierarchies, the threat of assessment and my reputation as being a less than lenient teacher, I was surprised and disappointed when I noticed students ill prepared for school. If they are not prepared when they know that I will be coming for observation, what would they be doing in my absence? If they are seemingly afraid of the hierarchies that I have created, with the powerful threat of assessment in my hands, shouldn’t they be working hard to prepare? What would they do throughout life when no one is watching? Hopefully, no one is watching. Yet it is behaviours like these that lead to increased surveillance, mistrust and a belief in the lacuna in quality teaching.
Later in college today, as we sat in discussion, we talked about how the system does not allow us to responsibly meet standards of education. We are answerable for students who fail. Who don’t deserve to be teachers on account of their work or lack thereof. It is easy for us to not fight the system and pass everyone.
And it gives us temporary peace. In the long run, it is these students who have no sense of responsibility towards the profession or who do not believe in working without external validation who will eventually downgrade the system further. As we continue to dumb down the curriculum the world over, we find it increasingly difficult to live without basic knowledge, behaviours, social norms, and etiquettes in our students. Not only have they not developed a passion for learning their subjects, there is little passion for anything.
We end up not knowing how to get them motivated. Hierarchies become an easy tool. They have to do what I say, irrespective of whether they want to or not. It is less than pleasant. And no matter how much space for expression may be provided, the final word is that of the tyrannical teacher. Never mind that the teacher is struggling with figuring out whether she knows enough in the first place.